Patrick, Pasta, The Past
by MarvelDC superhero fan
Summary: This is a dinner they never believed would be so important. This is a dinner where a friendship bloomed from something simple into something beautiful.


**Author's Note: So this is a tag from a few episodes back, and I wasn't that pleased with some of how they handled the whole Craig/Grace situation, but I thought this would be just a little something sweet. I hope to write more soon, tags for other episodes to bring Grace's story to life in the way I imagine it could be. Let me know what you think of it!**

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><p>To say that the restaurant Jane and she frequented by now would be comforting to Grace was something neither of them had to discuss. It was habit; they would need only to name a time and it was decided. Why Jane had chosen dining in a restaurant as a usual activity when he seemed to shy away from what most people did surprised her at times, but then again, she wasn't ready to have long chats in the gloomy attic (perhaps more so to her because she remembered the day she confessed her fears to him there.)<p>

Swirling a piece of pasta with capers around her fork, Grace alternates glances from her plate to him. She's asked him a question and hoping for an answer.

But all Patrick Jane seems interested in was enjoying his chicken parmigiana.

"Now that you lead Agent Darcy down a false path, where will Red John go from here?" she repeats. She works to make her voice softer and less tense.

"We'll have to see what he has planned next," remarks Jane as if it were so simple. With a glance back up at Grace's serious expression, he considers how to ease her concern.

"The main thing is that she's out of harm's way, and now it's his turn to make the next move."

"And how much will it wound you this time?" Grace mutters before she chews on a bit of veal. Suddenly, she wishes she had just focused on her pasta instead of acting the oracle. But she has a heck of a lot on her mind tonight.

Jane stares off again into space, meal forgotten, while she dredges up the bit of dread in her stomach and tries to toss it away.

Fork moving haphazardly close to the edge, eyes drifting to the corner of the tablecloth, she admits, "I haven't been sleeping too well over these last few nights. I'm dreaming... strange dreams."

"Hmm?" is Jane's reply. She decides to barrel on.

"They're about Craig. It's like I'm watching a movie of myself and him, but –" Grace's eyes slam shut because it's played over the back of her eyelids ever since she had the dream three nights ago, and she can't let it go.

"He's affectionate, until it's just us two, and then we're intimate, almost. Until I notice–" a large swallow to bury more unwanted emotion "–he's taking the necklace in his right hand, and he's somehow pulling, and then"

Her head swims with the fragility at which she says, "He's trying to choke me with it. And the Grace with him... doesn't even notice."

She waits for him to say something, for him to attempt comfort or some brush-off. Slowly, she allows one eyelid open, then another.

His face, in profile, seems darker than ever and even more unreadable, like a canvas wiped with so many dirty rags as if to leave the artist no room for creation. Both hands are under the table. He might as well not even be here.

Her jaw sets as the dread in her stomach returns and transforms into a lead weight. She wonders why she even said it aloud. Saying it made it true; now the anger and worry leave a gaping wound that makes her head swim.

Without rationalizing, she finds herself standing up, placing some bills, and hoping to exit as quickly as possible, to rid herself of this whole experience somehow.

But before she can make it out of the parking lot, she feels a hesitant, feather-light touch on her shoulder.

This sparks deep emotion in Grace that she can't shake off. So she admits rawly, "I know you have a lot on your mind, but after all these years of reading me, I'd do anything if you had tried three minutes ago." Her hands are shaking; she wonders if she can, in fact, face him tomorrow.

But she'll have to. Because it always works out that way, inexplicably, with the people she's never wanted to face, whether she's begging them not to come any closer in the back of her mind or not.

"Do you know what was the absolute worst part of the whole dream?" she throws out at him with a bitter taste in her mouth, twisting to face him.

She has to pause as she glares at him and his shadows. For a moment, she considers if he seems more broken or lost because his outline seems so rough and fractured, his fists clenched and his bad posture so unlike him. But she has to go on.

"I yelled out to stop it, to somehow end it.. and no one heard me. I couldn't do anything."

The last sentence lurks in the air, more stifling and gritty than they've wanted to feel for a while, obliterating any assumptions that pretending could work at the moment.

Her hair whips around, but the retreat to her car now is so much slower, as if walking through some unknown obstacle course where there seems no end in site, only bruises and the biting back of tears from the pain.

When she finally gets inside, all she can do is stare in the rearview mirror at the man who seems so crumpled, so dejected at another failing. It's a failure to add to the list Jane has painstakingly nursed since the day his wife and child died.

But the only question she can ask is if her reaction to him, the biting back, the not understanding the weight he's bearing so heavily too, is a failure to add to her long list as well.

The list she began to carry the moment she put her colleagues, her closest friends, in danger.

The list that could perhaps haunt her as greatly as her dreams.

The list which cannot bear the loss of Jane as a friend.

She stares once again at Jane, and finally takes the daring step of walking out of the car and up to him.

Without needing to think about it, her arms wrap around him. Thoughtfully, Jane whispers, "I'm sorry. We all need comfort sometimes." She can hear the regret in his voice, sincere and heartbreaking.

She holds on to him for a while, his forehead hanging in the crook of her neck, one arm returning her hug. It may be a few minutes or much longer, but neither really cares.

"We all need comfort from someone who matters as much as you do," is her amended whisper.

The gentle wind stirs their hair and the hope once again in their hearts. Tonight was what they both needed.


End file.
